The new place for millennials might be the library.
As they’ve become tech nerds, millennials have become book nerds too, reading more than their parents and grandparents, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
“Overall, 88% of Americans under 30 read a book in the past year, making them more likely to do so than older adults,” Kathryn Zickuhr and Lee Rainie wrote.
For young Americans who didn’t read, that slack was picked up by their peers. “Among younger Americans who did read at least one book, the median or typical number read in the past year was 10,” Zickuhr and Rainie wrote. Millennials who read work through almost one book per month.
For adults older than 30, only 79 percent read a book in the past year.
The boost among younger readers mostly comes from high-school and college-aged millennials. When something is required, millennials work through the reading material.
Millennials also use libraries at a higher rate than older Americans, but the usage is shifting.
“The percentage of all Americans who visited a library in person in the previous year fell from our 2012 to 2013 surveys, but the percentage who used a library website increased,” Zickuhr and Rainie found.
Libraries could be slipping from a physical place to an online repository of knowledge. That would explain the lower figure among millennials who said library services are “very important” to them, as well as lower figures from millennials on their knowledge about library services.
If those numbers don’t recover, local communities could lose an important bond. The Pew survey found that “Americans’ relationships with public libraries are part of their broader information and social landscapes.” Libraries provide a convenient physical space for civic groups to meet and for members to form intellectual communities.
All hope isn’t lost, however. More millennials think that “a lot of useful, important information that is not available on the internet” compared to older Americans. If the library will be saved, it’ll be saved by bookish millennials rather than their teachers.
